


Collection of RothFrye Snippets

by chambermusic



Category: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Fandom
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5175299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chambermusic/pseuds/chambermusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of RothFrye one-shots, ranging from 500 - 800 words. Previously named "Untitled RothFrye Snippet".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt A) at RothFrye b) to write a fic in English C) to post my writing on AO3. Take your pick.  
> Warning for bad grammar, cannon-typical violence, and...RothFrye. This fic is living proof that the ship has consumed my life.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxwell Roth can sense the future. It is why his investments are always so clever, why his gang prospers, and why he never loses in a fist fight. He'd get this faint but unmistakable inkling, he tells people, and when he doesn't he has a dream.

Maxwell Roth can sense the future. It is why his investments are always so clever, why his gang prospers, and why he never loses in a fist fight. He'd get this faint but unmistakable inkling, he tells people, and when he doesn't he has a dream. He also likes to tell people that he got it from a run-in with the police when he was twelve: an officer smashed his head against a railing for pick-pocketing, the impact so hard that he heard his own brain swashed against his skull. His vision was red, and-- _voila_ \--the moment he had his gift.

What he also had was a dream that accompanied him for years to come: a firm hand at the base of his head, cradling him, comforting him, and the complete darkness of the dream was not to fear because of the hand's warming touch. For years he thought it was his mother's hand, gentle and dexterous from juggling and lock-picking, and that although things were hard--ever since they moved to London--it was meant to be good again. When he failed to bring home money for dinner one day, however, she slapped him across the cheeks and he felt her hand, all of a sudden: not the gentle, warm touch he dreamed, but rough like rock face and sand paper from working in the factories. He felt cheated and disgusted. That night he ran away and found a circus.

Maxwell Roth became feared and famous, _became Maxwell Roth_. His liaison with Crawford Starrick brought him money, and the moment he saw the wreck that was to be Alhambra he saw his life's work. But eventually even the sweetest of success and luxury bored him-- _Starrick bored him_ \--until a certain assassin broke the Blighter's control in three boroughs all across London, and captured his full attention.

Ah, Jacob Frye--what he wouldn't give to be the man, or just to get close to him. To run across the rooftops in the light of day, to listen to one's own blood pumping in the veins. Handsome, young and brash, _freed, and to be free_ \--Maxwell felt the inkling again that he was to capture the little rook just like he had captured him, or rather, Maxwell could no longer find it in himself to live without Jacob and what he is.

So Maxwell agonized over the handwriting of his letter, the placement of napkins and saucers on his dining room table. He shouted at the maid for purchasing the wrong kind of ale, until Lewis rang the bell and announced Jacob's arrival. The kid had looked at him with guards in his eyes--fair--but also an open curiosity and the slightest pinch of shyness. He was particularly weak to compliments, Maxwell found, and couldn't help but wondered about his upbringing.

Even if he was to go through it over and over again, Maxwell would still say that the run he had with Jacob was a good one. Around them the Alhambra is burning to ashes, its glam and glory disappearing without a second's notice. Like an insect that leaves the cocoon to live but a moment. Maxwell suppose he _is_ always more fond of tragedies.

Jacob picks up his head with his right palm, the skin of his hand closing in on the back of Maxwell's neck. Maxwell no longer has eyesight--quickly draining from the wound--but he feels Jacob's hand. He feels Jacob's hand through the running of his own blood. _And the warmth. The touch._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jacob is more aware now, somehow—of how some men look at him when he is shirtless like this: the eyes that glue to the muscles on his back, not entirely for the action; or the lingering looks that often stray down, tracing the curve of his spine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some Jacob/OC--it's not actually a relationship, though.

Jacob has been at the fight club five days in a row. It’s surreal how things went on without a hitch after their battle with Starrick—Starrick, for one, would have been royally pissed at how London is carrying on without him. Jacob had fully expected to die then and there in the crypt—he was, sadly, not beyond dying on Evie in his tantrum just to prove a point. And it had seemed fitting, even, after the madness that became of Alhambra.

Instead, he gets to spend all his time at Robert Topping’s filthy clubs. Jacob is more aware now, somehow—of how some men look at him when he is shirtless like this: the eyes that glue to the muscles on his back, not entirely for the action; or the lingering looks that often stray down, tracing the curve of his spine. One man has been following him—he knows—for the third day today.

Jacob reminds himself that he is consciously allowing this to happen, that it’s all “part of the plan”—as his eloquent sister would have put it. It happens because he wants it to in the first place.

_It’s nothing like how Roth had kissed him: forcibly, shoving his tongue down his throat to Jacob’s shock. Jacob has felt disgusted, assaulted even, the intrusion leaving marks all over the privacy of his mind._

He quits after the fourth round, much to Topping’s dismay, and exits the amphitheater slowly, in a way intended to draw his audience. The man follows, hurriedly, in his rat grey coat and top hat. Jacob is doing it to test things out, he knows that himself, as he does not care one bit for the man: the fellow in the grey coat could have been attractive or plain, small or tall, a thug or a gentleman—the kind with a young wife and a lovely two-story house in Westminster—it matters not either way. He is doing it to replay the kiss between him and Roth, one that has left him with too much frustration and too many questions, slowly but surely driving Jacob towards the brink of break.

_—Did Roth enjoy it? Or did he do it just to screw with Jacob’s peace of mind? He wasn’t supposed to violate him that way. He wasn’t supposed to disregard Jacob’s wishes._

Jacob stops, and the man too, staggers to a stop, in a shaded alleyway that feels much secluded from everything. He keeps still, in a stance he hopes to be inviting. The fellow might have said something or he might have not, but Jacob is not of the mind to listen. He draws close then, lifting one of his hands to rest on Jacob’s chin—and suddenly it becomes too much—that Jacob slaps him away almost instantly.

_In the back of his mind he realizes he has gone too far to prove how he was unafraid of Roth’s kiss. Jacob is not known to be afraid of anyone or anything. Nor should he have been surprised to lose Roth, been all too familiar with the concept of loss all along the way. Growing up in Crawley—in the tight-knit community of the assassins—is to grow up among widows and orphans. He has seen women and children with empty stares, mere shadows of their former lives. He used to loath that sight. Used to vow to never fall to the same fate. So Jacob has learned to react in the only safe way he knows, to the emptiness that is their mother and the distant man that is their father: to rebel without cause, only anger._

Jacob’s reaction startles the man for a moment, but he wills himself still, impassive, until the man draws near for a second time. Their combined breadth rose in the air like a chilling mist, and he feels the other man’s wet exhale all of a sudden, blowing almost to his lips. The next moment he is impossibly close, kissing Jacob on the corner of his mouth—because Jacob is unmoving, his lips unyielding.  

—There’s no magical feeling that makes him want to kiss back. No impulse to part his lips and invite the tongue. There’s no throb in his heart, no feelings as he has felt when he was with Roth, no sense of invasion and breathlessness like Roth has left him.

Before Jacob knows it he has socked the man square in the jaw. Then before he realizes what he has done he is back on the train, a shivering mess waiting for Evie to return. Jacob finds himself frightened, more scared than he has ever been, more afraid than the times he thought their father was going to desert him. Jacob is afraid that the questions he wants answered can only be answered by Roth, the violent intimacy he experienced only given by him. He fears he has lost what is dear to his heart without knowing, and has known only too late.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a wearing down of wills--Jacob against the caressing baritone when Roth spoke softly to him, full of promises, full of hope.

_If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will._

_\-- Oscar Wilde, Salome_

 

* * *

 

"I will dance with you," Jacob decided, "if you tell me an embarrassing story of Crawford Starrick."

"You damn well know how to up the stakes, darling," Roth laughed, rather fondly, "now where do I find one such story?"

"You must know one, at least," he pressed on, "and I want a _really_ embarrassing story. The kind that Starrick would use black Voodoo to erase from the face of earth if he could."

They were back in the music hall, and a string quartet played softly in the background. The ceiling was lit with gas lamps; two candles cast slender, wavering shadows over the dinner table. Maxwell Roth's eyes flickered in the candlelight.  

"Fine," he said at last, "I might have a story as such. But only if you are game, Jacob."

 _To stay_ playing his games feels like yielding to the Blighter Maxwell Roth: yielding to the relentless attack of his endearments, to the naked, brutal desire deep in his eyes. It was a wearing down of wills--Jacob against the caressing baritone when Roth spoke softly to him, full of promises, full of hope. 

The quartet, right on dot, had already started a three-beat waltz. Roth held out his hand. "You're welcomed to come claim the story after the dance," he said, but Jacob remained unmoved.

"Story now, or no dance." He said instead.

"Story later."

"No."

Roth quirked an eyebrow, as if surprised by Jacob's sudden burst of stubbornness. "Story while we dance, final offer."

Jacob took a minute just to assess the look on his face. "Fine," he said in the end, and allowed himself to be taken into the man's arms. One of Roth's hands firmly planted itself on the small of his back.

 "You drive a hard bargain," Roth started smiling again, his words a mere whisper now that their faces lined up so close, "and you are looking fine today, darling."

Jacob couldn’t help but sneered at the comment. It was not as if he had wanted to: the look had taken labor--long, painful hours of playing doll at the draper's, then the tailor's, then a haberdasher's--all under the watchful eyes of his sister. There were to be no more battered pants or old twill coat after moving to London, only outfits in proper London fashion according to Evie dearest. The red of the neck scarf, he was told, brought out the best of his complexion. Was Roth seeing the same thing when he looked at him? The two of them spun swiftly to the far end of the stage, just as the Blighter dipped in even closer to start his story.

 

The greatest defeat of Crawford Starrick happened at a winter ball, apparently, where he had waited hours and hours for a chance to dance with Ms. Pearl Attaway. A story of Pearl should have touched an old nerve, but it didn't; Jacob remained pliant and content where he was. Roth looked rather humored himself as he recounted Ms. Attaway's vigorous energy that night, dancing the awaiting Starrick out of his mind.

"He finally snapped. 'Surely you'd let me have the next round,'" Roth jerked their linked hands almost unexpectedly, and Jacob found himself falling backwards. An outstretched arm caught him easily, long awaiting.

"Ms. Attaway looked at him like she was not the one trolling him all evening. She said: 'Cousin, if another round is what you want, you should have stuck to tennis.'"

 

If he laughed with Roth, or if he leaned in somewhat into his heat, it strangely did not feel like a surrender. To submit this much of himself does not seem all the same as a defeat, rather a step into an unfamiliar territory of new dangers and temptations. He was not _swept off his feet_ \--like some gullible girl who had forgotten altogether who she was--but instead found a new sense of strength in being loved and desired, in loving and desiring.

Jacob imagined the heiresses at the winter ball, their faces proud in the admiration of those who approached, and their faces brighter still when they allowed their hands to be taken. He imagined his sister in the shops, tempted by the promises and splendors of the silks and woolens from near and far, her eyes searching. And when her face became blushed, when her eyes sparkled, you knew she had found the loveliest there was, her lips repeating the silent chant: _I choose you. I want you._

 

Jacob's hands rested on the flat of Roth's chest. He waited, almost patiently, when the music dropped off and their movement stopped, unspoken words at the tip of his tongue.

 

 


End file.
